Review: Nyxia Uprising

Nyxia Uprising by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took Scott Reintgen less than a year after Nyxia Unleashed to publish this here Triad with Nyxia Uprising - and as expected, it's a mind-blower of an apocalyptic sci-fi novel. Split between multiple diverse POVs (though with Emmett Atwater still the primary one) to better get a grasp on all the machinations involved as Babel and the Imago struggle to evacuate a world doomed by the imminent collision of its two moons, this is the kind of story where everyone's playing games and yet nobody's playing, if you catch my drift. It's nigh impossible to read this book without flying through the thing at truly interstellar speeds, and I, for one, am pretty sad that this is the end of the road for this particular story world...for now, anyway. To paraphrase Victoria Aveyard when I met her at a signing in San Jose, never close a story door entirely. Of course, Reintgen's got at least two other series in the pipeline, both of which promise to be just as imaginative and cool as his debut series was. So for now, I'm bidding this world ave atque vale...and since I'm watching the Chamber of Secrets movie as I'm writing this, all those Harry Potter references did NOT go unnoticed by me, nor did they fail to make me laugh my ass off.

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Review: The Fall of Crazy House

The Fall of Crazy House by James Patterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I almost forgot that Crazy House was even a thing until now, a full two years after that book came out, because it finally got the sequel that cliffhanger demanded. Like its predecessor, The Fall of Crazy House is a welcome return to the James Patterson YA action-thrillers I used to devour all the time when I was a teenager - and, as the second book of the series, it's nice to see that we're finally getting some much-needed world-building. Though the first book was shockingly undetailed in this regard, it left enough little bread crumbs that as much as I was able to predict a lot of the twists in this book, it was still very satisfying to finally get some much-needed answers. And in keeping with the first book, here we get a lot of reiteration that tight government control, fake news, and rampant coverups of crimes from genocide to sexual assault all combine to make an enemy very much worth fighting. And just like the first book, this one has nearly nonstop action until the very, very end, when we once again get a pretty nasty little cliffhanger. I only hope that it doesn't take another two years for us to get Book 3!

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Review: Broken Throne

Broken Throne by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's Victoria Bloody Aveyard.

I'm in.





Especially with that glorious purple cover, all silver blood...it's gonna look so beautiful next to my collection of the first four books!

Review: We Set the Dark on Fire

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's a strange little novel, this one - strange in that it was one of the most mixed bags I've yet read in a while. Don't get me wrong, Tehlor Kay Mejia makes a very important point in her very important debut, but there are also other stories - YA, fantasy, or otherwise - which make some of those points better, imo. I feel like this book suffers most from underwhelming characters - the fact that it's written entirely in third-person doesn't help, because I've always had trouble getting into third-person POV's heads as opposed to first. But for its limits on the character front, Mejia is pretty gifted at her plotting and messaging - and especially at world-building, in which she creates a unique mythology to underpin this bitterly divided world. It has a lot of shades of the West, especially America, looking down on the global south from behind a curtain of closed borders and sneering privilege. It also draws a lot on images of Latin America's culture of machismo, heightened to the point of high-class men taking two wives - a custom enshrined in tradition dating back thousands of years, to the time of the gods, and those gods were pretty overly macho themselves because they literally split the island up after fighting over a goddess. But you know what? All it'll take is the right person, or people, to figure out how to turn that privilege around and help set things right. And while that doesn't quite happen in this here book...there's at least going to be one more in which it does.

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Review: The Red Scrolls of Magic

The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahhhhh, Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu - a combo I didn't expect to see until I heard that it was actually happening, writing a new series of Shadowhunters novels following the adventures - and adventurous love - of Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood? I'm totally in for it on this series, even if I totally find myself picturing Harry Shum, Jr. and Matthew Daddario far more easily than Godfrey Gao and Kevin Zegers. Sorry, but I'm actually more of a show fan than a movie fan in a lot of respects, and the casting of both halves of Malec is one of them for sure...but I digress.

Review: The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried

The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I hate to say it but sometimes Shaun David Hutchinson's books lose a bit of their luster with each one I read. I really loved my first book of his - At the Edge of the Universe - as well as We Are the Ants, and I enjoyed The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley and The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza too. But I guess The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried is...kind of a dud, I'm gonna be honest. I mean, there's some things going for it for sure - the usual hyper-inclusivity of Hutchinson's narratives, centering queerness (though this book also includes a straight girl's POV and she is, shall we say, not hip to LGBTQ+ issues) and doing its damnedest to keep marginalized identities from being characters' entire personalities. And it's got a pretty brilliantly on-the-nose metaphor for friendship decay in the form of a dead friend coming back to a sort of zombie form, though without the hunger for living flesh or contagion. Unfortunately, Hutchinson writes all too short a book, and it shows - there's simply not enough time to completely build the world, a lot of stuff goes unexplained, and frankly, July's POV is almost too annoying to read because she's simply a terrible person, self-centered and insensitive (though I get the feeling that Hutchinson had a little fun writing her, at times, as the stereotype of a white person unwilling to check their privilege.) Even Dino, as sweet and anxious and relatable as he is, I wish he could've shown a little more personality - I think Hutchinson might've sacrificed too much of Dino's backbone in the effort to prop up July, and perhaps also to avoid too many comparisons to previous protags of his. It's a shame, I was going to rate this one a little higher, but after letting my thoughts percolate a little more, I'm taking this one down to two stars.

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Review: Queen's Shadow

Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

E.K. Johnston wrote another Star War - not to sound too much like Justina Ireland or Rebecca Roanhorse in their excited reveals that they themselves had written some official literature for the franchise - and it's an unexpected but most welcome look at some of the leading ladies of The Phantom Menace. Not only Padmé, but all her handmaidens - especially Sabé, who gets a pretty important mission to help free slaves on Tatooine. As for the great Padmé, though, we get to finally see her early days in the Senate, almost immediately after the end of her time as Queen of Naboo, no less. This is such an essential story that it really makes you feel how little has been told between the first two episodes of the Skywalker Saga, and being E.K. Johnston it's a true feminist masterpiece on top of that. Quietly subversive, and uniquely powerful.

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Review: Mera: Tidebreaker

Mera: Tidebreaker by Danielle Paige
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I feel a little bit sad that after Danielle Paige wrote the Dorothy Must Die series, she still hasn't written anything else that matches that debut opus of hers in terms of quality. Not that she's a hack or anything, and certainly not that any of her material sucks. It's just that as much as the story strikes a balance between sweet romance and fantastic action, there's just a certain je ne sais quoi that it lacks. The little things about this book are what really make it shine for me, though - like the fact that teenage Arthur and Mera are drawn to very closely resemble their movie counterparts (Arthur's even got clearly Polynesian features), or the casual inclusion of a gay couple kissing in the foreground of one panel. Overall, it's not the best story - it feels a little torn between being part of the DCEU and not being part of it - but Danielle Paige makes those tiny little feels feel so magnified. I just hope that the next project Paige works on really, truly matches DMD's place in the pantheon.

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Review: Tiamat's Wrath

Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the midst of slow-bingeing the first two seasons of The Expanse on DVD with my dad, this latest of Corey's novels feels like it captures the essence of what makes the show so great too - multiple plots clamoring for dominance, but a blistering fast pace over its not-insignificant length, and an amazingly grand scope? Plus the chemistry of fan-favorite characters - especially Holden and Naomi and Alex - it's so hard not to unhear them as themselves from the show now! Though there's one major favorite that I'm very disappointed to see is no longer in the story - which makes sense, though, given a case of advanced age. Though it doesn't make it hurt less to see that very first line to this book...nope, I still wanna pretend I didn't read that with my own two eyes. Though this book tends to feel like a bit of a middle novel simply to bridge the gap between the first and last of the final sub-trilogy of this grand nine-novel series, it's nevertheless one of the best novels James S.A. Corey has yet given us - and well worth the extended wait.

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